Do I really need a NAS?

[TAC]

Although I really want to put together a NAS just for the fun of it, the practical side of me says do I really need a dedicated NAS system? Some of the questions I'm asking myself are as follows:

1) If I'm really only looking to backup data from 4 home computers and will never really be streaming data from more that one machine at a time, why wouldn't I just set up a Windows Homegroup and just leave the one main computer on all the time?

2) Since this would be a fairly simple home system, if I did go with a NAS would a mid-range consumer MB with an Intel i3 be enough processor?

Thanks,
-TAC

 

[Yatti420]

You can save money buy acquiring cheaper drives less capacity for backups.. A supermicro board is going to be the same price is as your mid-range board.. You could use an I3 I do Believe some support ECC? A pentium g will aswell.. I needed a place to sort out all my files a redundant nas is a good start.. Yes ECC is required for long term safe & redundant storage...

 

[scurrier]

If you use ZFS and what the data protection features that it offers, you must use ECC. Search around for the reasons why.

1. Leaving one computer on is more of a pain than you'd think. You'll want to reboot it or something and then find that you interrupted a backup from another system. It also probably uses more power than what's necessary. You also aren't likely to be running a ZFS-featured OS on this computer, so you wouldn't be getting the anti-corruption features of ZFS.

2. I use an i3-4130 and it works with ECC. The cheap pentium G3220 also works with ECC and is a good choice if you don't need to use encryption (since the pentium doesn't have the AES-NI feature). The pentium is like $60 and is haswell 3.0 GHz. Would be great for most home uses.

If you decide to get a NAS, keep in mind that FreeNAS is somewhat of a time investment to configure and do correctly.

 

[DrKK]

I struggled with this same question initially. Do I really need one? Ultimately, I decided that I could justify about 50% of the cost, and I assumed I would find the other 50% in things I didn't know about yet, and with the (gag me, I know) friends and stuff I'd make in this community.

I was right about all of that. What I've learned about FreeNAS and/or FreeBSD in the past several months has literally made me into a new man, from a computer-guy standpoint, to say nothing of what I gain by interacting with the people involved in this project.

Really, it's the best $1000 I've ever spent. I have my NAS mostly serving media files to my family in the home. As time went on, I expanded it to run my Mumble server, my email servers, and a caching DNS recursor, to say nothing of small shit like the IRC bouncer I also run from it.

My rig is a Supermicro X10SLM+-F, an Intel G3220 (which are only $55 or so), 16GB of RAM, and a handful of 2TB drives, and I'm happy as a clam with that, and haven't even REMOTELY scratched the surface of that CPU for my simple file serving uses.

So, if you can already feel that 50-75% of the cost is justified, you'll find more than enough, potentially, to get to 100+%.

 

[scurrier]

Good point on the learning aspect. I also wanted to learn more about Unix-derived operating systems and definitely have learned a few things. Now I won't have a blank stare if anyone ever mentions FreeBSD to me, like what I see on my friends' faces when I mention it to them.

 

[TAC]

I struggled with this same question initially. Do I really need one? Ultimately, I decided that I could justify about 50% of the cost, and I assumed I would find the other 50% in things I didn't know about yet, and with the (gag me, I know) friends and stuff I'd make in this community.

I was right about all of that. What I've learned about FreeNAS and/or FreeBSD in the past several months has literally made me into a new man, from a computer-guy standpoint, to say nothing of what I gain by interacting with the people involved in this project.

Really, it's the best $1000 I've ever spent. I have my NAS mostly serving media files to my family in the home. As time went on, I expanded it to run my Mumble server, my email servers, and a caching DNS recursor, to say nothing of small shit like the IRC bouncer I also run from it.

My rig is a Supermicro X10SLM+-F, an Intel G3220 (which are only $55 or so), 16GB of RAM, and a handful of 2TB drives, and I'm happy as a clam with that, and haven't even REMOTELY scratched the surface of that CPU for my simple file serving uses.

So, if you can already feel that 50-75% of the cost is justified, you'll find more than enough, potentially, to get to 100+%.

DrKK,
Thanks for the comments. This is just what I needed to push me over the edge. If my wife asks, I'm blaming it on you! lol As much as anything I'm looking at it as a learning experience and something to keep me off the streets at night. I'm sure I'll also find some other cool stuff to do with it.
Since I don't have too much heartburn on the $$ and I'm not sure where I'm going to end up with applications, I think I might go with the i3-4130 over the G3220.